Posts Tagged ‘john tory’
[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: John Tory, planetarium, condos, Liberty Village, Edward VIII
- Toronto has been unified around John Tory, May Warren argues at the Toronto Star, largely because of Doug Ford.
- Urban Toronto notes an exciting University of Toronto proposal for a new planetarium downtown. I would definitely go for that!
- Urban Toronto notes</u. that excavation has begun for Panda Condominiums, at the former site of the World’s Biggest Book Store.
- blgoTO notes a Liberty Village intersection with massive new projects on every corner.
- Jamie Bradburn looks at the scant traces of King Edward VIII in Toronto, at Yonge and Eglinton and at Exhibition Place.
[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Jennifer Keesmaat, John Tory, 650 Parliament, St. Clair, Don Valley
- Lauren Pelley at CBC Toronto notes how, despite trying hard, Jennifer Keesmaat was unable to displace John Tory as the clear front-runner.
- Mark Gollom at CBC notes that John Tory may be able to find ways to work with Doug Ford, though the province will remain the dominant partner in any relationship.
- Many of the tenants displaced from 650 Parliament Street were happy to return briefly to their old homes, to retrieve belongings. The Toronto Star reports.
- blogTO shares these vintage photos of St. Clair Avenue a century ago, to all appearances just another rural road.
- Urban Toronto shared a gorgeous aerial photo of Toronto, looking south from a point in the Don Valley towards the downtown.
[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Julianna Kozis, Danforth, black communities, weapons, politics
- Julianna Kozis has been identified as the girl 10 years old killed in Sunday’s shooting. The Toronto Star reports.
- Toronto Life shares a list of twenty of the top attractions along the Danforth.
- NOW Toronto reports the concerns of community groups that the response to gun violence will further marginalize black communities, too much emphasis being placed on enforcement and not enough on supporting marginalized communities.
- Toronto City Council has just voted, by 41-4, to ban the sale of handguns and ammunition within city limits. Narcity reports.
- David Rider notes that John Tory wants the Ontario government to change the municipal government of Toronto, to give the mayor more powers, in a response to (among other things) gun violence. THe Toronto Star has it.
[NEWS] Five Canadian politics links: Doug Ford, Ford vs Wynne, Ontario and Québec, John Tory, NDP
- Will portraying Doug Ford as a bully actually be a viable strategy for his opponents?
- Paul Wells takes a look at the contrasting policies of Kathleen Wynne and Doug Ford, each with their own set of promises, over at MacLean’s.
- The contrast between Ontario and Québec, as their incumbent Liberal governments approach election time and their fiscal records are coming into question, is illuminating. CBC contrasts and compares.
- I agree entirely with the idea that Mayor John Tory has to prepare Toronto for the worst coming from Queen’s Park. The Toronto Star made the case.
- The argument of Nora Loreto that the NDP has lost the plot and, in Ontario at least, are not ready for government, makes me a NDP voter sad.
[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Old City Hall, Dean Lisowick and Sorough Mahmudi, mayor, Quayside
- Toronto City Council has voted overwhelmingly in favour of making Old City Hall a municipal museum. The Toronto Star reports.
- CBC shares more memories of victim Dean Lisowick, remembered by all as a sweet guy. There’s less about Soroush Mahmudi.
- Shree Paradkar, distressingly, is entirely correct about the list of victims revealing whose lives are valued and whose are not, by police and within the gay community. The Toronto Star has it.
- Is there now, Edward Keenan wonders, room for a mayoral to campaign to the left of John Tory with Doug Ford out of the race for now? He writes at the Toronto Star.
- Susan Crawford at Wired warns about the risks posed by the Google investment in the Toronto waterfront, about a hollowing out of the idea of a city as a common good.
[URBAN NOTE] “John Tory defends road toll plan: If you have a better idea, let’s hear it”
Chris Selley writes in the National Post about Tory’s defense of his road toll plan.
Mayor John Tory visited the National Post editorial board Thursday to defend his plan to toll the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway, putting the proceeds toward some $33 billion in approved-but-unfunded capital projects, notably public transit.
“There was no sense having a traffic and transit plan … if you didn’t have the answer to the one question that’s been elusive over time: How are you going to pay for it?” Tory said. “Our map of transit lines is pathetic, compared to any city (in the world) of our size, sophistication and wealth.”
And if you don’t like his plan to pay to improve it, he said — to everyone implicitly, and explicitly to Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown — where’s yours?
It remains a remarkably bold gambit. But the plaudits died down by the end of the day he announced it. Then, and since, Toronto’s air raid siren of complaint has been fading back up toward full volume.
“In Toronto, whenever the going gets tough, politicians turn to the panacea, road tolls,” Coun. Shelley Carroll wrote, bizarrely, on her website. No one suggested tolls were a panacea, and it is demonstrably not the case that Toronto politicians always turn to road tolls when the going gets tough. Hence the lack of road tolls.
[URBAN NOTE] “Tory expects Trump to soften in office”
The Globe and Mail‘s Jeff Grey reports on Toronto mayor John Tory’s hope that Donald Trump will soften in office. Speaking as a Torontonian myself, I am skeptical of this: The only thing that ended Rob Ford’s reign was not a change of conscience on his part, but death.
Toronto Mayor John Tory says he believes Donald Trump will moderate the controversial stands he took during the campaign after he is sworn in as president of the United States.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Mr. Tory said the United States was an “incredibly resilient” country.
“I would never bet against the United States. And I think they will adjust to this different kind of leadership,” Mr. Tory said. “And so too, I think, will Mr. Trump adjust. I saw him this morning saying, I’m the president of all the people. And I think that’s a welcome thing for him to say. And one trusts that he will act that way because that is what you discover in these jobs in public office, that you are there to represent all the people.”
But Mr. Tory made a point of saying he would remain focused on making sure his city is “one Toronto” that provides opportunity for the “marginalized” and welcomes people of “every description, every faith, every colour of skin.”
He also said he would try to find “positive ways” to work with the United States and convince Mr. Trump to view Canada as a good partner and a good place to do business and invest.
[URBAN NOTE] “As Mayor Tory hits midterm, no challengers in sight”
The Toronto Star‘s David Rider suggests that John Tory, arguably a latter-day Red Tory, is Toronto’s inescapable future.
“I will work with the council that the people of Toronto elected tonight in moving Toronto not left, not right, but forward,” John Tory declared Oct. 27, 2014.
Two years later, halfway through what he hopes will be his first of two terms, it’s easy to find critics of the tax-averse mayor who launches pricey mega-projects unlikely to come to fruition before the next campaign in 2018.
It is difficult, though, to name anyone likely to beat him.
“I don’t see anyone at the moment who could challenge Tory — he has found a way to chart the middle ground,” says Adam Vaughan, the Liberal MP and former city councillor whose name arises when politicos talk about potential future mayoral candidates. “In Toronto, to win, to become the mayor, you need to be a centrist.”
Vaughan is focused, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s parliamentary secretary, on helping deliver a national housing strategy for cities. Attempting a return to Toronto city hall, he says, is “not on my horizon.”
Tory’s team, which celebrated his midterm mark at a private party Monday, has already started 2018 election planning.
A Bit More Detail 